


"one more chapter."

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [30]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Can be read as romantic but honestly?, Fear, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, The girls are a better pair than any couple, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Hazel cannot quite get the scene in the music room out of her mind.Canon EraWritten for the thirtieth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	"one more chapter."

_ “Meals came at odd times and we were left to hang about doing nothing. We played rounds and rounds of cards in the House common room and gossiped about the murders.” _

While reading over Hazel’s account of The Case of the Murder of Miss Bell so I could write The Case of the New Secretary, I realised that Hazel, as usual, failed to elaborate on one of the most important points: of course, I mean the words above.

That is why, to pass the time, I will elaborate on the quote above.

On Thursday — two days after everybody figured out that it was Miss Griffin — I was winning at cards. As usual, might I add. However, Hazel was curled up in an armchair in the corner of the room,  _ A Murder On The Orient Express _ open on her lap. She droops over it like a wilting flower, her shoulders hunched and her hair hanging from its plait and over the pages.

“Hazel!” I crowed. “Look, I won again!”

“Well done, Daisy,” she mumbles, curling even further over the book.

I have never seen Hazel so tired. “Clementine, take my place,” I tell the girl sitting beside Lavinia and watching what she does.

With that, I stumbled to my feet in an unladylike manner and walk over to Hazel, sitting on the arm of her chair. “Hazel,” I said in a very loud voice.

She jumped. “Oh! Yes, Daisy?”

I wriggled my cold stockinged feet between her legs and the cushion, making her squeal. “There you are. Now, what on earth is wrong?”

“I cannot stop thinking about that scene in the music room, Daisy,” she said, and she leant her head onto my lap and something jolted through me at the contact. My hands found her hair out of their own accord and I felt her shiver under my cold and dexterous fingers. “It was like being in the pictures… we watched grown-ups weep and shout and accuse each other of dreadful things!”

“It is like a book. And in books, Hazel,” I reached and cupped her face in one hand, forcing her to tilt her head to look up at me. “heroines never die.”

“This is not a book, Daisy.”

“Who says?” I asked.

I was and am afraid too, though I will never admit it.

I have been afraid since the moment Hazel and I were chased in Deepdean in the middle of the night. I almost stopped being afraid… and then Fallingford happened, and my brother and I were standing in the metaphorical rubble of our family home, with Hazel holding my hand. Then I almost lost Hazel to Alexander Arcady during The Case of the Murder of Elizabeth Hurst, then I had a horrible moment in Hong Kong where I believed Hazel to be the killer. I was afraid at the Rue for Martia, and afraid that Hazel would leave me because… because I like girls. I was that Deepdean would close. And, although the summer was a blessed relief, I am afraid and afraid and afraid and afraid in Egypt.

“Heroines do not die, Hazel,” I tell her. “Squish over.”

She wriggled over and I squashed in beside her, though we almost ended up on top of each other. “You ought to sleep,” I told her, leaning my head against her shoulder.

“Mhhh…” She turned the page. “One more chapter, Daisy.”

“You’ll die if you don’t sleep!” I remember telling her.

Hazel turned to look at me, dark eyes glittering and skin flushed, and she said, “But Daisy, don’t you know? Heroines do not die.”


End file.
